Some things are possible, some are not (or would be...

Some things are possible, some are not (or would be extraordinarily poor form). It's possible that they could get the permit granted at any time for example, but a director buying on market makes it extremely unlikely that they have been having exciting progress with plant production, and if they did announce good progress at the plant in the near future it would be an extremely bad look now, an abuse of privilege.

Shareholders of companies tend to get excited when directors buy on market, but nine times out of 10 it's window dressing. The price of this amount of shares is significantly less than the benefit to the company if they are planning a CR in the next few months for example. $20-30k worth of shares may seem like a large parcel to most retail investors (generally the median holding in a company by shareholders is something around $2-10k), but as a company expense it's tiny, and you just have to look at the comments people make when it happens to see how much of an impact it has on sentiment. Even relative nobodies like members in this discussion often trade larger parcels like that, it's a fraction of the amount of AGY shares I've personally trader or held at one time and others here have held much more than I have.

Make no mistake, this is for show, not an investment. Shareholders can get angry and/or put me on ignore if they like, but it won't change the reality. The directors may be hoping the permit comes before they have to do the CR, and they may get their wish, but this all but confirms what I was already confident about in terms of the lack of progress at the 2KTPA plant.